The Last Good Day Read online

  Zack bowed to her. “A provocative choice, madam,” he said. “But your wish is my command.” He placed his fingers on the keys and played the opening bars of “Havin’ My Baby.” After a moment of astonished silence, people began to sing along, tentatively at first, then as liquor released inhibitions, lustily. Kim’s choice was cruelly ironic, but it did the job.

  “Havin’ My Baby” was as remote from Noel Coward as it was possible to be, but as one who understood “the potency of cheap music,” Coward would have recognized the phenomenon taking place in that room. An old and cheaply sentimental song was melting the ice of grief and releasing real emotion. When the music was done, people began – finally – to talk about what they had lost. Nowhere in their remembrances was there a hint of the spectral sadness I’d seen in the man in the gazebo. Their Christopher Altieri was a man of joy and shuddering energy, warm, thoughtful, funny, brilliant. As I picked up my coffee cup, I found myself wishing that I had known him.

  The funeral was at three o’clock Saturday afternoon, but I drove into the city just after breakfast. I was alone. Saturdays were the Point Store’s busiest days. It would have been difficult for Leah and Angus to get away, and there was no particular reason why they should. Fate had spun Angus into the vortex of Chris Altieri’s death, but my son had not been a part of Chris’s life. Taylor had stayed behind, too. Rose was bringing Gracie and Isobel into the city, but Taylor had already been present at too many funerals in her young life, and I was relieved when Leah suggested she could spend the day helping out at the store.

  It was good to be alone. I needed to get away from everything and everybody. In the past week, the name of an old TV quiz show called Who Do You Trust? had nagged at me. I was growing genuinely fond of my neighbours at Lawyers’ Bay. Despite what must have been a devastating shock, they had made every effort to be kind to my family and me. They had been Kevin Hynd’s friends for twenty-five years. He trusted them, and I trusted Kevin. But try as I might, I couldn’t shake off Alex’s warning to tread lightly among these people. Nor could I dismiss the questions I had about Alex himself. Why had he spent so much time at Lawyers’ Bay the previous winter? And what was the nature of his relationship with Lily Falconer?

  The grass in front of my house on Regina Avenue was too long, the hanging baskets were parched, and the flower beds needed weeding. That said, when I opened my front door I felt a burden lift. It was good to be back on solid ground. I riffled through the mail my neighbour had piled in the basket on the hall table. There was nothing spectacular: magazines, bills, an invitation to a croquet party, and a postcard from Kevin with a picture of the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa and a note: “The Tibetans used to believe this country was connected to heaven by a rope. Today the clouds are low and the mountains seem to scrape the sky. Heaven feels close.” Suspecting that in the days ahead I might need a reminder that heaven was close, I dropped the postcard into my bag.

  After I’d soaked the hanging baskets and turned the sprinklers on the flower beds, I called the lawn service I’d hired for the summer. Their phone had been disconnected. I started calling Angus’s friends, found someone with a younger brother who was desperate for money, and hired him sight unseen. Having put my house in order, I went upstairs to troll my closet for a dress suitable for a funeral.

  I read once that Pat Nixon never hit the sack without first pressing and repairing every outfit she’d worn during the day. The image of her sewing on a button while Dick scowled and lusted had stuck with me, but I was never impressed enough to emulate her. That morning I wished I had. The only lightweight black dress I owned looked as if I’d slept in it. I hauled out the ironing board, plugged in the steam iron, and began.

  Fired by the axiom that when you feel bad you should look good, I had called from the lake and made an appointment to have my hair cut. It had been a rough week and I wanted to get away from everything, to be submerged, if only for two hours, in the warm bath of a female culture where the largest questions were whether my eyebrows should be waxed or if my roots needed touching up.

  Five minutes after I walked through the doors of Head to Toe, I knew that the answer to both questions was yes, but help was at hand. Business was brisk that Saturday morning – an entire bridal party, including, by some cosmic joke, not only the bride’s mother, but also the woman who had replaced her as the main squeeze of the bride’s father. My hairstylist, Chantelle, and I agreed the situation had definite French-farce potential. After my roots were covered, I chose the newest of the glossy magazines, settled into my chair, and waited for the pleasures of a drama in which I would play no role whatsoever.

  As always, I left Head to Toe grateful that I was part of the female mystery. Chantelle had decided I needed to go shorter and lighter, and the results were pleasing. I’d pored over all the recipes in the glossy magazine and reached the Zen conclusion that henceforth I would read recipes for the pleasure they brought me in the moment rather than for any hope of reaching future perfection. And – icing on my metaphorical cake – the bride’s mother and her replacement had come face to face and ended up trading stories about what a cheap son of a bitch the bride’s father was. Molière would have been licking his chops.

  The good times continued. When I went home to change, my neighbour Lynn Chapman was waiting at my front door, offering an apology, an explanation, and an invitation to lunch. Lynn and her family had just come back from a holiday in Quebec. They hadn’t realized my lawn service had gone belly up, but they had now placed themselves on alert, and if I was interested in a tuna-salad sandwich and a glass of iced tea, they would continue to apologize until I forgave them for letting my grass reach a state where it required life-support.

  After I’d dressed, my freshly ironed dress revealed upper arms that weren’t bad for a woman of fifty-five. As I drove over to the cathedral for the funeral, I thought it was possible I’d make it to the end of the day.

  I was early, but parking was already a problem. The sky was cloudless and the temperature soaring – a perfect day to get out of the city – but half an hour before the funeral Mass, the streets around the cathedral were choked. The first parking spot I found was four blocks away. By the time I climbed the steps to Holy Rosary, my newly blond roots were dark with sweat, and I was grateful to step inside and let the cool wash over me. I found a spot at the end of a pew halfway up the aisle. I knelt, said a prayer, then sat back and looked around.

  Regina is a city of 185,000, but lives intersect, and many of the faces in Holy Rosary were familiar to me. When I spotted a colleague from the university, or a friend from politics or the media, we exchanged the small, awkward smiles people exchange on such occasions, then turned back to our programs as if somehow in that brief obituary and description of the order of service, we could discover the reason we were sitting in a shadowy church on a brilliant July afternoon mourning a man who had chosen death over a seemingly gilded life.

  As always at funerals, there were surprises, people whose connection with the deceased was not immediately apparent. Given his puzzling links with the residents of Lawyers’ Bay, Alex Kequahtooway’s presence wasn’t exactly a shocker, but as I glanced around the congregation I spotted three of Alex’s colleagues from the Regina force. In the normal run of things, the relationship between the police force and the legal community was not chummy, but Chris Altieri’s specialty had been family law, and it seemed no one was immune to domestic problems.

  When my friend Detective Robert Hallam came up the aisle, I touched his arm, and he stopped to talk. His pleasure at seeing me warmed my heart. Married late and happily, Robert Hallam was the most uxorious of men. His wife, Rosalie, had been the administrative assistant in the political-science department in which I taught, and, in Robert’s books, anyone of whom his Rosalie approved was aces.

  As always, Robert was a tonsorial and sartorial delight. His steel-grey crewcut and moustache were precision-trimmed. His lightweight beige jacket and slacks were without wrinkle, and the Windso
r knot in his coffee-and-cream tie was impeccable. He extended his hand. “How are you, Joanne? I never see you, now that Rosalie’s retired, and you and Alex are …” He flushed with embarrassment.

  “No longer seeing one another,” I finished his sentence. “It’s all right, Robert. I’m over it.”

  His face softened with concern. “All the same, it can’t be easy for you being in the same room as her, even if it is at a funeral.”

  I met his eyes. “You’ve lost me,” I said. “Being in the same room as whom?”

  Robert did a quick shoulder check to see who was in hearing distance. Many were. Experienced cop that he was, Robert dropped his voice. “The woman the inspector has … become intimate with,” he whispered. He peered at me anxiously. “You must have known she’d be here today.”

  It took me a moment to absorb the information. I’d never known the identity of the woman with whom Alex had become involved, and the knowledge that she was somewhere in the cathedral made my heart pound. I struggled to appear calm. “I haven’t seen her yet,” I said.

  “Well, Mrs. Lily Falconer is outside, dressed to the nines, bold as brass, waiting to make the grand entrance with her husband and the other big shots.” Robert’s tone was acid.

  My mind shattered in a dozen directions. Lily Falconer was Alex’s lover. It all made sense: her casual reference to Alex by his first name the day after the murder; the number of times the silver Audi had pulled into the Falconers’ driveway; Alex’s confidence that he was well acquainted with the people at Lawyers’ Bay. Remembering how harrowed Alex had looked when he’d interviewed me, I experienced a flash of mean-spirited gratification. If he and Lily Falconer were having an affair, it wasn’t bringing him much pleasure.

  “Anyway, I think he’s crazy.” Robert was irate, and in the heat of the moment he abandoned his stage whisper. “No two ways about it, Lily Falconer is a looker, but you’re no slouch, Joanne, and you’re not married to a millionaire lawyer who could make the inspector’s life hell.” The message had been delivered loud and clear, and Robert’s expression was sheepish as he gazed around to gauge the number of people who had been in earshot. “I’d better get back to work,” he said.

  “Wait,” I said. “Robert, why are you here today? Is there something suspicious about Chris Altieri’s death?”

  Robert flicked a piece of lint off his jacket. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire. That’s all I can say, Joanne. That, and remember your old friends. I know Rosalie would love it if you came by the house sometime. She’s decorated up a storm. She’s painted our bedroom something called wasabi green.”

  “Very trendy,” I said. “Do you like it?”

  “I never thought I’d sleep in a room the colour of Japanese horseradish,” he said. “But Rosalie said it would grow on me, and she was right. Every day I like that wasabi green a little more.”

  There are times when the truth sets you free and there are times when it just makes you feel like shit. Robert’s revelation fell into the second category. I had been angry and hurt when my relationship with Alex ended, but I had never doubted the fact that when we had been happy, his commitment to me had been as deep as mine to him. It seemed I’d been wrong.

  My eyes stung. Luckily, a funeral is one of the few places where a woman can cry without drawing attention to herself. I was in the process of having a quiet weep when someone slid into the place next to me on the pew. I dabbed at my eyes, stuck my hanky in my purse, and cursed my luck. Still teary, I opened my funeral program. The photo Delia had taken from Harriet Hynd’s album had been printed on good-quality bond and included as an insert. There was no text explaining why it was there. None was needed. Everyone knew the identity of those five young people on the cusp of their stellar lives. But the cosmos had shifted for them. The shining future had brought betrayal, bitterness, brokenness, and violent death. They, too, had discovered that we stand on shifting sand.

  The first thing I noticed about the young woman who sat down next to me was the spray of creamy lilies in her hand. They were as simple and exquisite as she herself was. She was dressed expensively in a silk sheath woven with a pattern of birds and flowers and designed to underscore the perfection of her arms and legs. As soon I saw her profile, I recognized her. Her name was Patsy Choi. Her hair was shorter and more chic than it had been three years earlier when she was at the centre of one of our nation’s most bitterly fought and divisive lawsuits, but she had been a girl then, just fourteen. As the small string orchestra played the opening notes of the processional, she stiffened. Not that long ago, she had been a musician herself, a promising violinist. The promise had been cut short when, after an argument about practising, her uncle and guardian smashed her fingers to a pulp.

  Christopher Altieri had been her lawyer, and after a protracted trial in which battalions of expert witnesses sought to discredit or destroy the principals and one another, Patsy Choi had been awarded a seven-figure judgement. As we stood to greet the funeral party, Patsy placed the lilies on the pew, picked up the hymnal, and began to sing. Her hands were mutilated but functional. Perhaps the same could now be said of her life, and as I glanced around the cathedral, I wondered how many of those who’d come to celebrate Christopher Altieri’s time on this earth had found it easier to bear their own crosses because of him.

  The three remaining partners of Falconer Shreve made their entrance together. Blake carried an earthenware urn whose purpose was all too evident. Behind the partners, like an afterthought, Noah and Lily walked with their daughters. The priests and the clerical party made their way up the aisle, and the Mass for the dead began.

  The incense was lit, reminding us of the moment of Christopher Altieri’s baptism; the words of comfort were offered and people sat back lulled by a liturgy that either soothed or bored them. Only when Zack Shreve pushed his chair to a spot in front of the chancel steps did the air become charged. The priest, whose speech carried the soft lilt of the West Indies, had used a microphone, but Zack had an actor’s voice, deep and sonorous. Kevin told me that in a courtroom Zack used his voice like an instrument, whispering, booming, dripping with venom as the occasion demanded. That day, Zack chose to draw the huge and disparate crowd into a circle of intimacy with him at the centre.

  His words cut deep. “Life is precarious,” he said. “The only certainty is that we are mysteries even to one another. All of us loved Chris Altieri. None of us could save him. Chris had a favourite piece of music. It’s called Lux Aeterna, which for those of you who have forgotten means Eternal Light. That, of course, is what Chris was to us.”

  From the first notes, the piece was – no other word for it – transcendent, a work of such radiant beauty that it seemed to bathe us all in the perpetual light of its Latin title. The text was drawn from many sources, sacred and secular; the words were, by turns, lyric, contemplative, exultant. I turned my mind off and let the music wash over me. When the choir concluded with an exuberant “Alleluia,” I felt my heart lift. Beside me, Patsy Choi’s lips curved with joy – the music had touched her too. As I knelt to say a final prayer, I wondered whether Lux Aeterna had worked for Chris – whether in the last months of his life he had found a measure of peace in this ethereal music.

  Patsy Choi slipped away before the recessional. Understandably, she was no fan of crowds. Neither was I, but I was in no hurry to leave the cathedral, and I was not anxious to face Lily Falconer, so I stayed behind, and as the mourners trailed out I walked to one of the side aisles to look at the building’s famous stained-glass windows.

  I was pondering what was going on behind the sorrowing face of the Queen of Virgins when I sensed that I wasn’t alone. Once again, someone had joined me, but this time I knew my companion. Anne Millar had been a student of mine. “I have to talk to you, Joanne,” she said. “There’s something terribly wrong at Falconer Shreve.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  When she’d been a seminar leader for the Political Science 100 class I taught, An
ne Millar had been a plump, quietly pretty girl who wore no-name jeans and baggy sweaters and eschewed makeup as a political statement. Since then, she’d graduated from law school and landed a job with our city’s oldest and most prestigious law firm. Apparently, success had caused her to revisit both her philosophy and her wardrobe. With her shoulder-length blond hair, black miniskirted power suit, and strappy stilettos, she was now the epitome of courtroom chic – a woman to be reckoned with. From the set of her jaw and the tension in her body that afternoon, it was also clear that she had an agenda.

  “If there’s something wrong at Falconer Shreve, you should talk to one of the partners,” I said.

  Anne’s gaze was withering. “Those are the last people I’d talk to about this,” she said.

  An old woman smelling of mothballs and piety joined us and gazed with rheumy, loving eyes at the stained-glass portrait of Our Lady. When Anne spotted the old woman, she clamped my elbow and steered me to the next window: Mary, Comforter of the Afflicted. Anne apparently was not in need of comfort. Without giving Mary even the most cursory of glances, Anne began her story. “Chris Altieri left a message on my machine the night he died. He said he had to talk to me.” She raised an eyebrow. “He said he had to atone.”

  My mind jumped to the first and most obvious possibility: Anne had been the woman with whom Chris had been involved, the lover he had forced to seek an abortion. “Maybe you should start at the beginning,” I said.

  “There is no beginning,” she said. “I was away for the long weekend and I didn’t get back till after midnight, so I didn’t pick up the message till Tuesday morning. By then, of course, it was too late.”

  Anne’s eyes darted around the cathedral. A few people had lingered to pray. Others were staying behind to take in the famous windows of Holy Rosary.

  “This isn’t a good place to talk,” she said.